All Wisconsin state employees, including part-time workers and those paid with federal money, will be forced to take 16 days off over the next two years. Those details and others are contained in a document released by a state agency answering some of the most frequently asked questions about the furloughs ordered by Gov. Jim Doyle to deal with a projected $6.6 billion budget shortfall...Morale is low at the University of Wisconsin System given the furloughs and the rescinding of a pay raise for about two-third's of the system's 30,000 employees that took effect Monday, said spokesman David Giroux...
Thousands of state employees who get paid by federal or private funds will need to take 16 days of unpaid time off, according to a document posted on the Web site for the Office of State Employee Relations...
Wisconsin claims to graduate up to 90 percent of its high school students. But dropouts are underreported, and fewer than 50 percent of blacks and Latinos earn diplomas, according to a new study. More than 7,000 high school seniors fail to graduate each year, and more than 400,000 Wisconsin adults lack diplomas. It's a sad and costly story that demands aggressive education reform to reach more of these struggling students earlier in life...
...So it may have surprised many people familiar with MATC's recent history when the technical college announced last week that leaders of MATC's three unions, including Local 212, had agreed to give up a 3.25 percent raise (3.5 percent in the case of support staff) planned for their members in 2009-10 in order to help the college close a $19 million budget deficit. Relinquishing the pay raise ensured that the college would not have to furlough or lay off any workers this year, and campus leaders agreed, in exchange for the unions' concession, to promise no layoffs through the 2010-11 academic year, as well...
